Chapter 76 Elated

Does it count as work toward my Dante catalogue if I spent my book time today (read: the hours when the kids are at school and I am not folding laundry, grocery shopping, or driving carpools) making an important acquisition for it? I should have been writing descriptions, imaging the covers of books, compiling a mailing list, and checking out printing costs. Instead, I was shopping.

I had thought I was about done acquiring works for the catalogue, which focuses on illustrated and unusual editions of the works of Dante Alighieri. There were a few other works I wanted to add which just plain eluded me. I’ve talked about this catalogue for so long (about six months) that I just want to complete it to prove that it really does exist. After searching for these few elusive items high and low with no luck, I decided that my acquisitions for this catalogue were done.

However, ten days ago, I found it. The. Perfect. Item. — the one which will really be the high point of my catalogue and bring focus to the collection as a whole. It was offered in an auction, and I bid for it today and won it. I’ve been looking for said item, whose existence I’d heard of but never seen, for close to a year. Finding it was purely serendipity, a word one hears a lot when it comes to book hunting, but which one rarely gets to experience.

The feeling I get when I find a book which I think I will never find is pure elation! Remember that phrase “a hymn to joy” that veteran booksellers Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern referred to in their definition of fingerspitzengefuhl? That’s exactly the feeling I had today. I was ready to break into Symphony No. 9 from Beethoven (Ode to Joy) and tap dance. It doesn’t happen often that I have such a find, but it happens often enough that I want to keep hunting for more. I don’t want to be a tease, and I realize I am being one because I am not revealing what is the item in question. I want very much to tell all of you, but then I won’t have any reason to put together a catalogue. So, please, please, please keep being patient. All will be revealed in good time. The catalogue is coming — as soon as I finish with all of the holiday hoopla, I’ll be right back to work on it.

I apologize for bragging about my find without naming it. It’s just that I’ve shared so many of my past mistakes, I want to let you know when there are some things that go right as well. As soon as I print the catalogue, I’ll post here which item I was referring to.

Thanks for understanding.

While I have your attention, have any of you who are experienced antiquarian booksellers spent six months or longer putting together a catalogue or is it just me that takes so long to complete my catalogue? I realize there is a learning curve the first time one writes a catalogue, and I admit to being a bit on the perfectionist side when it comes to books, but really, is it at all normal for me to take so long to do this? I am a part-time bookseller, but I still feel like I should have this catalogue done. Any and all comments would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Happy Hunting!

Chapter 75 Antiquarian Bookseller Memoirs

I try to read as much as I can about antiquarian books and book collecting. I truly enjoy this type of reading, and I learn a lot about the antiquarian book market as well. One genre which I’m currently enjoying is that of the antiquarian bookseller’s memoir. I’ve been breathlessly reading about the “Golden Age” of book collecting and nostalgically reading about bookselling in the days before the internet, when the open shop was king and some cities even had “book rows” (streets filled with bookshops). Always one to live with one foot in the past, I wish I could have been a bookseller during an earlier time, apprenticed in some fine shop, to a knowledgeable bookman (or woman) and taking time to learn the finer points of the trade. To have been able to see and meet personally one’s colleagues rather than exchanging pleasantries via email! Well, I think I would have liked that time very much.

However, I’m also very much a person of the present, and while there is a lot to be admired and emulated in booksellers of the past, I think that I am at an advantage to be beginning my career in the age of internet bookselling. (Oh, yes, I know I am recklessly optimistic.) I won’t list all of the advantages here, because they’ve been enumerated elsewhere many times, and there are definitely some disadvantages to not having an open shop and being one of many faceless competitors on the internet. I’m just saying that I’m happy to be where I am. Oh my, I’ve just re-read my last sentence. That was terribly vague, and if I were still an English teacher, I’d put a big red line through it. It’s late tonight (Sunday) and I’m getting tired. I mean to say that I am happy to live in the time and place in which I live. Onward!

To know where we may be going, we have to know where we’ve been, and I think I have a lot to learn from my predecessors, particularly with regards to researching book finds and determining how and to whom you’re going to sell said finds. If, like me, you’d like to know how bookselling was done before it was changed by the internet, and if, like me, you want to know what parts of the old paradigm can be applied to the new, I suggest reading the following:

Everitt, Charles P. The Adventures of a Treasure Hunter. A Rare Bookman in Search of American History. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1951.

Gekoski, Rick. Tolkien’s Gown & Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books. 2004. London: Constable.
(Ok, this one’s pretty current. Great stories, though.)

Lewis, Roy Harley. Antiquarian Books: An Insider’s Account. 1978. New York: Arco Publishing Company.

Magee, David. Infinite Riches: The Adventures of a Rare Book Dealer. New York. Paul S. Eriksson, Inc. 1973.
(I like this one because the author was a San Francisco bookman.)

Meador, Roy and Mondlin, Marvin. Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers. 2004.

Rosenbach, A.S.W. Books and Bidders. The Adventures of a Bibliophile. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1927.

Rostenberg, Leona and Stern, Madeleine. Old Books, Rare Friends. Doubleday. 1997

Rostenberg, Leona and Stern, Madeleine. Old & Rare, Forty Years in the Book Business. Allenheld and Schram. 1974.

Rostenberg, Leona and Stern, Madeleine. Between Boards: New Thoughts on Old Books. Allenheld and Schram. 1977.

N.B. The bibiliographical information I’ve listed above is not necessarily for a first edition. It’s for the edition I own or have borrowed from my library, which is in some cases a later printing.

There are many more than what I’ve listed here. And what I’ve listed here will already be familiar to those of you who are experienced booksellers or book collectors. Still, it’s always worth knowing what came before you. The past shapes you, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. I find that, rightly or wrongly, I identify closely with those booksellers who came before me. And, I do not know of any memoirs of internet booksellers. Do you?

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 74 The Rumors of the Death of the Printed Book Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

You may have heard about Amazon’s new e-reader, the Kindle. As with the Sony Reader before it, overeager minions of technology are greatly exaggerating the rumors of the death of the printed book. The Kindle is shiny, it’s pretty, but it requires cables, batteries, and $400.

Remember, you can read a printed book for less money and less eye strain, and, even better, you don’t have to recharge it. Portability is perhaps the e-reader’s greatest claim to fame, but I will remind you that books themselves have been portable, elegant, (and wireless) since the days of Aldus Manutius (compare his 1502 Dante to the large incunabula which preceded it, for example).

I don’t spend a lot of time worrying that these e-books will replace the printed book in my lifetime. That’s because I’ve discovered an even greater threat:

Meet the Hot Wheels Mad Scatter Set, a small toy given to my boys by a neighbor today, on the feast of St. Nicholas. On the eve of this day, the neighbor has all of the children on the street (an even dozen) leave their rain boots out on the front porch over night. She then (very generously) puts oranges, nuts, chocolate coins and a small toy in each child’s boot. When the kids wake up, they think old St. Nick has visited, giving them an early taste of Christmas. It is a charming tradition, one I am enjoying all the more this year as I suspect my sons’ days of believing in Santa are numbered.

The boys awoke extra early today to look for their boots. Thoughtful Husband and I didn’t get up until about 15 minutes after the kids. They’d already dumped out the contents of the boots and found their Mad Scatter Sets. Huck had read the directions below:

In case you missed it, the idea is to use a catapult device to launch the car, which will then bounce off of whatever barriers you create for it. Look closely. See what the manufacturer suggests you use for barriers? With the added instruction, “Let ‘er rip!”

Try doing this with a Kindle!

I believe those are books in the picture. Books!!!! It’s toys like these that made me quit teaching, believing my supervision over children was needed more in my home than it was in my classroom.

Fortunately, I don’t keep any Aldines in the living room, where the boys were playing. The good stuff, the stuff for resale, is locked up or out of reach elsewhere in the house. So, I had a little fun picking the books to “let ‘er rip” against: four book club editions of later Harry Potter volumes, books with so many copies printed they will never in my lifetime be rare, and certainly not in book club format. Still, I did have some compunction about damaging books with small cars. I put the books away, and after school, Tom and Huck constructed barriers out of Lego bricks. If you get the car going just right, it will crash through and destroy the barrier, something young boys find incredibly entertaining for hours. Hence, I can write this blog post right now.

Another sign that the printed book is not dead: the younger generation, raised on electronic and battery-operated everything, keeps writing books.

If you’ll allow me the small indulgence of parental pride, Huck has written and bound his own book, Santa’s First Cookie, and inscribed it to me, his mother. Though he doesn’t much enjoy reading, he loves to draw and make up stories. I knew that my bookseller lingo was rubbing off on him when he said, “Mom, can you staple the binding and can you tell me how to spell ‘illustrated by’ and ‘written by’. It’s for my title page.”

That’s my boy. He may not be much of a reader (yet), but at the age of 7 he knows terms like binding, illustrator, and title page.

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 73 Making the Dream Real and More Reading for Booksellers

I wrote the other day about the bookstore of my dreams, but another bookseller has already made that dream a reality. Click here to see what I mean. Congratulations to Scott Brown of Eureka Books! (He’s also the editor of that wonderful publication, Fine Books and Collections Magazine.) I can’t wait to take a book hunting trip up the coast to Eureka, CA, to see it in person. The photographs are beautiful. Best wishes, Scott, on your new endeavor!

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, the always informative bookman Hugh Hollowell is back after a bit of a hiatus. He has an interesting new plan up his sleeve. Read about it here.

Christmas came early for me last week. I received an order from Oak Knoll’s sale recently. Sort of a Christmas gift to my business of reference books I really, really just can’t live without. Here’s what I got:

Author: Belanger, Terry
Title: LUNACY AND THE ARRANGEMENT OF BOOKS

Author: Zempel, Edward N. and Linda A. Verkler (editors)
Title: FIRST EDITIONS: A GUIDE TO IDENTIFICATION STATEMENTS OF SELECTED NORTH AMERICAN, BRITISH COMMONWEALTH, AND IRISH PUBLISHERS ON THEIR METHODS OF DESIGNATING FIRST EDITIONS.

Author: Moebs, Thomas Truxton
Title: U.S. REFERENCE-IANA: (1481-1899)

Author: Glaister, Geoffrey Ashall
Title: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BOOK.

Author: Jackson, Robert H.& Carol Z. Rothkopf (editors)
Title: BOOK TALK: ESSAYS ON BOOKS, BOOKSELLERS, COLLECTING, AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Author: Taylor, W. Thomas
Title: TEXFAKE, AN ACCOUNT OF THE THEFT AND FORGERY OF EARLY TEXAS PRINTED DOCUMENTS

I’ve mentioned Glaister’s and Belanger’s books before. I just never had my own copies, though I had perused both. A few books, like Book Talk and Texfake, I’ve wanted to read or re-read for some time. I thank those booksellers who have looked up references in their own copies of Zempel for me in the past or who have shared these titles with me.

It’s not easy to buy reference books. You’re not going to resell them and they aren’t cheap. Reference books are an investment in your knowedge as a bookseller. If you’re lucky, the information you find in a reference book as you are cataloguing books for sale will sometimes more than pay for the book. Remember: Knowledge adds value.

A heavy rainstorm is forecast for this area tomorrow. I (almost) hope for the power to go out so I can settle down with my new books and a pot of tea and read until the kids get out of school.

See you in the stacks!

Chapter 72 Take Joy, Or, I Discover Tasha Tudor

First off, as I received a couple of emails congratulating me on my new shop, I just want to be clear that I do not have a new shop. I thought I was being funny and thanking my mom at the same time for a book shop shaped Christmas tree ornament she gave me. I do apologize if I wasn’t clear in the post. My mom is a great lady, but she would never buy me a real book shop. (Would you, Mom?)

I was supposed to visit another bookseller today, about an hour’s drive away. Plans changed at the last minute, and I was left with an open calendar. As it turns out, that was just fine. It’s raining rather hard here today, and rather foggy as well. The fog today is that type of mist that makes the air so still that the sound of the hard heel of one’s shoe on the pavement echoes as one walks outside. Indoors, I put the tea kettle on the stove, pulled out my book-shaped teapot and some Comfort and Joy tea, and decided that I would finish making satin bows to adorn our the Christmas tree.

I decided to watch a video while I did this. A few days ago while on a visit to the public library with Huck, I found a 1998 VHS video biography of Tasha Tudor called Take Joy. Because I enjoy her illustrations, I borrowed the video, unsure as to when I would fit in time to watch it. Something about Tudor’s illustrations make me feel in the Christmas spirit. I don’t know why. I just know that when I see her books my mind thinks “Ah, Christmas!” Although I am familiar with Tudor’s lovely books and illustrations, I knew very little about her life. After watching the video, I now know why I am mysteriously drawn to her.

What you are about to read may not be news to you, because I assume some of you dear readers are book experts and already know all there is to know about Tasha Tudor and her Vermont home, Corgi Cottage. You’ll have to remember that because I have been extremely busy raising small children the past ten years, I have not had time to read the biographies of authors I like. I was fortunate enough to read her books to my children. Anything beyond that was too difficult at the time. I was intrigued to learn that Tudor lives and dresses as if it is the 1830s, her favorite historical period. From her website:

Her home, though only 30 years old, feels as though it was built in the 1830’s, her favorite time period. Seth Tudor, one of Tasha’s four children, built her home using hand tools when Tasha moved to Vermont in the 1970’s. Tasha Tudor lives among period antiques, using them in her daily life. She is quite adept at ‘Heirloom Crafts’, though she detests the term, including candle dipping, weaving, soap making, doll making and knitting. She lived without running water until her youngest child was five years old.

From a young age Tasha Tudor has been interested in the home arts. She excels in cooking, canning, cheese-making, ice cream making and many other home skills. As anyone who has eaten at Tasha Tudor’s would know, her cooking skills are unsurpassed. She collects eggs from her chickens in the evenings, cooks only with fresh goats milk, and uses only fresh or dried herbs from her garden. Tasha Tudor is renowned for her Afternoon Tea parties.

Once summer arrives, Tasha Tudor leaves her art table to spend the season tending her large, beautiful garden which surrounds her home.

Oh my goodness! Can I please go and visit her for tea? I’ll find a way to get to Vermont from California. Tudor is now 92 years old and she is living my fantasy life. There’s a bit of the pioneer woman in her, and like her, I’ve often thought I should have been born in the 1800s. I don’t own any nineteenth century clothing, and would be exceedingly insecure about wearing it if I did. Still, I think it much prettier than many of today’s fashions. And I don’t know how to milk goats or gather eggs from hens, but part of me really, really wants to. My favorite part of the video, in which she gave viewers a tour of her lovely home, is when she says, “I don’t fear anything. I know how to handle a gun and I am self-sufficient here at Corgi Cottage.” There are so many things I want to ask her about her life:

Do you drive a car?
Do you have electricity?
Do you have a washing machine?
Do you ever have to go to the grocery store? Costco?
Do you wear period clothing when you leave Corgi Cottage? (Why would you ever leave beautiful Corgi Cottage?)
Could you teach me how to make candles and soap?
Could you teach me to draw?
Who brings you art supplies, or do you go somewhere and buy them?
Do you use a computer? A telephone?
Would you drink tea with me?
Please?

I’ve been looking online and see there are several books about Tudor’s life I will have to borrow from the library and add to my Christmas wish list. (Though I, too, love the 1830s, I do love the modern convenience of being about to learn more about Tasha Tudor from my web browser.)

Thank you, thank you, Tasha Tudor. Today you reminded me to take joy in all that I do, and though my suburban lifestyle means that instead of milking goats I go to Costco and the grocery store (often) and instead of playing musical instruments, I own the eighth wonder of the world, the iPod, I want very much to be a pioneer like you.

Chapter 71 My New Book Shop

UPDATED: Please be sure to read to the bottom of the post.

I have good news for you! Over the weekend, my mother bought me my own book shop! I know, I know. I’m very spoiled to be treated so well by my mother. I have to apologize to my two brothers, who didn’t get anything. (Sorry, guys. I guess Mom does love me best.) The shop is everything I always dreamed an antiquarian book shop should be. It’s in a charming old building, it has a lovely central stair case, and it is already decked out for the holidays. There are floor to ceiling bookshelves and even one of those library ladders on rails that you need to reach books on the upper shelves. There’s room for additional stock. Every time I look at this shop, I see a dream come true.

My mom is a good bargain hunter, so she didn’t mind spoiling me this Christmas. This shop cost her less than $10. That’s right — less than $10.

And it’s a small shop — it holds miniature books and its total dimensions are about 3 inches by 4 inches. You read that correctly.

Here it is:

I certainly hope you’ve guessed by now that the shop my mom bought me is not a real shop but a Christmas ornament! I have great parents, but I don’t think I am as spoiled as to have them buy me my own actual brick and mortar shop. My website will have to do as my virtual shop for the time being.

My mom has been one of my biggest supporters in my bookselling quest. She read an article about Nicholas Basbanes several years ago, clipped it and gave it to me, her book-loving daughter. That led me to purchase and read all of his books. She encouraged me to apply for and helped me to go to a one-day book collecting seminar when I was just getting started. She has, on numerous occasions, taken care of Tom and Huck so I could attend book sales, book seminars, and book fairs. She has helped me keep my bookselling dream alive, and this book shop Christmas ornament she bought me reminds me of that each time I look at it. All booksellers should be so fortunate.

Thanks, Mom, for all of your support and encouragement! And thanks for the ornament. I hope you know I appreciate all you do.

Chapter 70 Making Rather Merry

We had a full weekend this weekend, almost none of it devoted to books or bookselling. That sounds bad, like I don’t care about my business, but we were, in the words of Bob Cratchit, “making rather merry.” Tom and Huck’s school had a Breakfast With Santa on Saturday — pancake breakfast cooked by the Father’s Club, decorations made and put up by a committee of mothers. Admission is a donation of a bag food for a local shelter and a toy for children there. I spent Thursday and Friday at school making decorations. The theme for the breakfast was “Christmas in Candy Land” and decorations were patterned after the Candy Land board game. We glued gum drops and candy canes on small foam Christmas trees, cut out large cardboard gingermen, and lit and ornamented ten Christmas trees. We even put colored carpet squares on the floor leading up to Santa’s chair, just like the squares on the game board. Santa arrived at 8:00 a.m. and dutifully received an audience of several hundred elementary school-aged children. Breakfast for 500 is no small task, and Thoughtful Husband and I spent Saturday helping with other parents to set-up and clean-up. A good time was had by all.

We also purchased our Christmas tree and got the lights and ornaments on it. I like my home to feel cozy during the dark days of December, so I add a few other decorations around the house to encourage that feeling — a snowman collection (I must really have the collecting gene, because in addition to books, I have a burgeoning collection of snowmen and Santas), some of my favorite seasonal books, and a new brand of tea:

I tell you, if you could drink the cinammon-orange-peel-pine scent that is the month of December, you would be drinking this tea. Nothing better than a cup of it on a cold afternoon in my book geek mug:

I have a bit of planning to do for Christmas and New Year’s. It will likely slow down my book work, but, as I am “making rather merry”, I don’t mind if books in need of cataloguing wait a couple of weeks. Of course, books ordered will still ship immediately. Blog posts will still occur five days a week. That poor Dante catalogue, though. It’s getting pushed back another couple of weeks. I don’t think people really want to read Inferno at Christmastime anyway. A bit too much doom and Scrooge-like heavy-handed punishment.

To make this post somewhat book related, I’ll include some of my favorite dialogue from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a book so well-known and well-loved it is almost a cliche. Still, I love coming back to it year after year:

“Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by coming here at this time of day.”

“I am very sorry, sir,” said Bob. “I am behind my time.”

“You are?” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think you are. Step this way, if you please.”

“It’s only once a year, sir,” pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. “It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.”

“Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge, “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again: “and therefore I am about to raise your salary!”

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it; holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit.”

Christmas is only once a year. Like Bob Cratchit, I’m making rather merry. Whatever you like to celebrate in December, I hope you get the chance to do the same.